IBM Promises Muscle for the Mac

Robert McMillan
10.14.02

Macs are about to get a serious boost.

Industry sources say that IBM plans to announce a new 64-bit processor on Monday -- known as the PowerPC 970. It will run a new line of Macintosh products that could be available by the end of next year.

The chip promises to goose Macintosh clock speeds, which right now trail Intel's Pentium line significantly. Pete Sampson, IBM senior PowerPC architect, says that the PowerPC 970 will reach clock speeds of 1.8 GHz and will also be able to do a lot more with each processor cycle. Current G4 CPUs can issue three instructions per cycle; the PowerPC 970 will issue eight.

By the end of 2003, when PowerPC 970 is expected to ship, Intel's x86 offerings will still boast roughly twice the Mac's clock speed, said Tom Halfhill, In-Stat/MDR senior analyst.

But this does not mean that they will be twice as fast. Halfhill predicts that the PowerPC's uptick in instructions-per-cycle will partially make up for the performance discrepancy.

Macs will also be able to use colossal amounts of memory with these new chips -- up to 4 terabytes, according to IBM's Sampson -- because of their 42-bit address space. Current G4s have only a 32-bit address space, and are limited to 4 GB of memory.

Though 4-terabyte systems won't ship anytime soon, IBM says that as video and graphic file sizes become larger and larger, the increased address space will be an important feature.

"Thirty-two bits was 'way too much' some time ago, so I think it's reasonable to put enough address bits in to make you kind of think it's unreasonable to have that many," said Sampson.

The 970 will also support symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), which means that multiprocessor Macs should become more common.

"This design is aimed at four-way (systems)," said Sampson. "It can certainly support eight-way. It's intended for SMP."

What, exactly, Apple plans to do with the new chips is unknown. Though sources close to the company confirm that Apple will be using the PowerPC 970, the company did not return calls requesting comment and has been tight-lipped about its 64-bit processor plans.

But Halfhill says the chips make a natural fit for the high end of Apple's product lines.

"If I were to design a chip for desktop media, professional publishing and graphics, this is the kind of chip I would design," he said. "This single chip would probably be as powerful as any two G4 chips you would find right now in a Mac."

The chip could also be used in Macintosh server offerings, he said. "It probably depends on price more than anything else. If it's going to cost more than a couple of hundred dollars, Apple will probably see it more as a server processor."

IBM has not disclosed pricing for the 970.

Big Blue is being equally cautious about revealing its own 970 system plans, but analysts say the chip could provide the basis for an IBM Linux system.

"There's a Linux port to PowerPC, and a fair amount of support for that," said Kevin Krewell, senior editor at the Microprocessor Report newsletter. "This would work well as a very high-performance Linux box."

Anthony Frausto-Robledo, editor of Architosh, a site for Mac computer-assisted design users, said the new chip will give IBM a second chance at success with its Common Hardware Reference Platform, a failed end run IBM tried to make around Intel in the mid-1990s.

"Since Linux and OS X users are getting along so nicely now, I think this new chip will usher in a new era in the computing wars," he said.